GMG - Las Vegas Weekly

November 7, 2013

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Page 16 of 59

3.
The best
chefs
from
all over the
world come
to Las Vegas
Wolfgang Puck, the global culinary icon who's considered
the ﬁrst big-name chef to land in Las Vegas, was celebrating
the 20th anniversary of Spago last year when he took some
time to reﬂect on the vastly changed Vegas food landscape.
No one else was here when Puck pioneered ﬁne dining in
the Forum Shops, and now, he said, "you have to ask who's
not here."
The list of legendary chefs operating restaurants on
the Strip—not celebrity chefs, necessarily, but true innovators, masters of cuisine—is long and impressive. Americans
Thomas Keller, Michael Mina and Paul Bartolotta. Spaniards
José Andrés and Julian Serrano. Frenchmen Hubert Keller,
Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Joël Robuchon, Pierre Gagnaire
and Guy Savoy. Gagnaire's Twist is his only restaurant in
the States; likewise for Savoy at Caesars Palace. They all
specialize in mind-altering food and stunning service, and
in Las Vegas there's high demand for just that. There's no
other place in the world where so much talent is crammed
so closely, and there's on-the-rise talent, too: David Myers,
whose Hinoki & the Bird in LA has been lauded as one of the
best new restaurants in the country, maintains Comme Ça at
Cosmopolitan.
But wait, there's more: Foodie emperors Nobu Matsuhisa,
Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali have or are expanding their
local presence. Chicago's Graham Elliot is working on a Vegas
deal. Masaharu Morimoto is coming to the Mirage, and after
a ﬁrst try at Wynn, the great Daniel Boulud is returning to
the Strip, this time at Venetian. Las Vegas has always been
known as the entertainment capital of the world, and its
magnetic pull on the planet's top culinary artists has established it as a ﬁne dining capital, too. –Brock Radke
4.
Big tasty events happen here
> Uncork'd
If you haven't been paying attention, you might not have noticed that Las Vegas
has joined the exclusive list of destination cities where food mega-fests happen on the
regular. You've got Bon Appetit's Vegas Uncork'd and Food & Wine's All-Star Weekend, to
start, and the World Food Championships—built for Vegas—take over the Fremont Street
Experience this weekend. Edgier national touring fests like LuckyRice and Cochon 555 keep coming back, and
the 59th General Assembly of French Master Chefs (so serious!) lands at Venetian/Palazzo in March. ¶ A new
dimension came into focus last month—a great big local food festival. "I've been here for three years, and I have
to admit that at ﬁrst I didn't get it, but this really is one of the top dining destinations in the country," says Bruce
Bromberg, chef, restaurateur and co-chair of culinary programming for Life Is Beautiful. "It's not just the Strip;
it's all these little pockets of development in Downtown and Summerlin and Henderson. There's really a renaissance going on, and Life Is Beautiful is just a barometer of where this thing is going." –Brock Radke
UNCORK'D BY ISAAC BRECKEN FOR BON APPÉTIT
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